NEW YORK — Ghislaine Maxwell’s attorneys were rebuffed Thursday in their efforts to grant anonymity to three potential witnesses for the defense and to call lawyers representing two of her accusers to the stand.
They were allowed to compel a lawyer representing one of the accusers to testify, though the scope of the questioning will be limited.
Maxwell’s team had wanted to call three attorneys as witnesses because they claimed that they pressured their clients to testify against Maxwell in the criminal case so that they could receive bigger payouts from the estate of Jeffrey Epstein.
These recent defense tactics comes as Maxwell’s family indicated that the British socialite will not testify in her own defense.
Britain’s Telegraph reported that a family spokesman said Maxwell is “unlikely” to take the stand because she is “too fragile” to testify. They didn’t elaborate, but the family has long complained about Maxwell’s “abusive” treatment during the 18 months she has been locked up awaiting trial.
During the first two weeks of trial, Maxwell, 59, has been actively engaging with her lawyers and at times whispering and smiling with her sister, Isabel, and brother, Kevin, who sit in the front row.
Kevin Maxwell told reporters outside the courthouse that the family had filed a complaint with the United Nations concerning Maxwell’s “inhumane” prison conditions.
“It gave me a tremendous sense of relief to be close to her, to be able to see her in the flesh, even to be able to speak to her,” Kevin Maxwell said.
Court opened Thursday with the judge weighing in on whether several defense witnesses could testify using pseudonyms — an unusual request given that they weren’t claiming to be victims or under any threat or danger. They were instead citing “unwanted attention.”
Maxwell attorney Christian Everdell had argued it would be only fair to give certain witnesses anonymity since the women accusers who testified for the prosecution were allowed to use pseudonyms.
“We all know that this case has gotten a lot of attention and that people who are testifying here might get a lot of unwanted attention, especially if they are testifying on behalf of Ms. Maxwell,” Everdell told the judge last Friday.
“And they would like to be able to do this, at least some of them, with some sort of anonymous protection.”
The judge disagreed with the premise, denying the request on Thursday. U.S. District Judge Alison Nathan wrote that the request was “unprecedented” and rejected several arguments Maxwell’s team had made to justify the anonymity.
“It is notable that the defense does not cite in support of its motion a single case in which a court granted the use of pseudonyms to defense witnesses,” Nathan wrote in denying the request.
Aside from opposing that proposal, prosecutors resisted a separate effort to force three lawyers to testify. At least one of the attorneys, Robert Glassman, has been subpoenaed by the defense. Maxwell’s lawyers have said that Glassman, who represents a victim known as “Jane,” wrote an “ambiguous” email to the government suggesting that he told his client that cooperating in the criminal case could help her obtain a larger settlement from Epstein’s estate. They also seek to show that he coached her to change her story for prosecutors, who discovered that part of her timeline was inaccurate.
Jane ultimately received $5 million from the fund, which was set up to pay damages to Epstein’s accusers after the financier was found dead in August 2019 in what authorities said was a suicide by hanging. Epstein had been at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.
Nathan allowed Glassman to be called to the stand to testify in a limited capacity about his discussions with federal prosecutors, but rejected Maxwell’s request to compel the two other lawyers to testify.
Maxwell’s lawyers also wanted to call lawyer Jack Scarola, who represented a victim named Carolyn, who received $2.8 million from the fund; and Bradley Edwards, who represented a victim known as “Kate,” who received $3.2 million. Defense attorneys, in court filings, contend that Kate, a British citizen, asked Edwards to try to get her a visa as part of her cooperation in the case.
“An alleged victim’s desire for a U-Visa is powerful evidence of motive and bias,” Maxwell’s attorneys said in a letter to Nathan. A U-Visa gives special immigration status to victims of certain crimes, including sex crimes. One of the ways to become eligible for a U-Visa is to provide help to law enforcement officials in a criminal case.
All the accusers testified during trial that they have no stake in the outcome of the case because they received their settlements well before trial — and that no amount of money will bring them justice.
“Money will not ever fix what that woman has done to me,” Carolyn testified at trial.
On Thursday, Maxwell’s team began its defense by calling Maxwell’s former executive assistant, Cimberly Espinosa, as its first witness. Espinosa testified that while Maxwell had been a demanding boss, she had taught Espinosa everything she knows.
The defense said its case would last two to four days. Maxwell’s lawyers indicated that it was having some difficulty arranging travel for witnesses. Initially, they had planned to call as many as 35 people, but now say they are paring that list down since the prosecution’s case ended early. It’s unclear why the government’s case ended so early. The case was expected to take six weeks.
The abrupt conclusion has led to questions about why certain witnesses weren’t called, even though they were prominently mentioned during trial. For example, prosecutors didn’t call Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who was mentioned several times as another underage victim recruited by Maxwell.
Instead of calling Giuffre herself, prosecutors used another witness, Juan Alessi — Epstein’s former butler — to testify that he was with Maxwell the day she met Giuffre at the spa at Mar-a-Lago, former president Donald Trump’s country club in Palm Beach. Even more oddly, prosecutors called a records custodian at Mar-a-Lago to authenticate the employment record of Giuffre’s father, Sky Roberts, who worked at the resort at the time Giuffre met Maxwell. The record showed that Giuffre was his daughter. There’s no indication whether the record showed Giuffre’s age or that she, too, worked at Mar-a-Lago.
Prosecutors had also indicated they were going to call one of Epstein’s former employees in New York to authenticate Epstein’s “little black book” of addresses and who was expected to testify that she had been directed to remove computer equipment from Epstein’s New York home after the Palm Beach Police Department had begun investigating Epstein in 2005. Prosecutors offered no explanation for why she wasn’t called.
